AHC: No GOP Obstructionism 2009

-The ACA was originally a Republican plan (RomneyCare in Massachusetts, NixonCare, Heritage coining the individual mandate in response to Clinton's Employer mandate, etc)
-Obama wanted to cut the Corporate tax rate to 28%
-Obama's time as president was when part of the Bush Tax Cuts were made permanent
-Obama partially funded the ACA via cuts to Medicare spending (meanwhile, Romney was campaigning on undoing that - in fact that was the only complaint he actually made about the ACA)
-Obama despite being broadly pro-immigration still deported more folks than several prior presidents combined
-Obama was willing to cooperate with the GOP on a grand bargain for dealing with long-term entitlements issues (c
-Obama kept Republican Bob Gates on as Secretary of Defense
-Obama had Centrist Democrat David Boren and Chuck Hagel as top intelligence advisers
-Obama was reasonably supportive of fracking (with environmental caveats)
-Obama supported cap and trade (which was an early 90s republican idea to deal with Sulfur Dioxide) over more heavy handed regulatory policies

And on trade, Obama got more Republican support than Democratic support.

It's actually kind of funny. Trump in many ways is closer to the caricature conservatives had of Obama than Obama was/is.

Yeah, Rush popped up then. Might just be the old correlation/causation chestnut, might be something to it.

The POD may be late, but the circumstances of blanket obstructionism are so specific you can’t tell me they’re a universal truth. What if different meetings are held? What if the dialogue in the room is more like the 2012 GOP after-action report? What if it takes them longer to come around to blanket obstruction? Or what if the fever breaks early? There are questions applicable to the time period.

Try reconcile Jackson's post with your response to me. It doesnt. Add in McConnell's line in early 2009 that his number 1 agenda was to make Obama a 1 term President. I really dont know how you change this without changing the underlying attitudes held by both congressional R's and their voter base.
 
Try reconcile Jackson's post with your response to me. It doesnt. Add in McConnell's line in early 2009 that his number 1 agenda was to make Obama a 1 term President. I really dont know how you change this without changing the underlying attitudes held by both congressional R's and their voter base.

Sorry, I'm a little unclear on what you're saying here.

Which part of my response is to be reconciled with which part of Jackson Lennock's?

And your point is, correct me if I'm wrong, that my POD is too late? Or is it that I'm wrong that the GOP are all-in for blanket obstructionism?
 
Sorry, I'm a little unclear on what you're saying here.

Which part of my response is to be reconciled with which part of Jackson Lennock's?

And your point is, correct me if I'm wrong, that my POD is too late? Or is it that I'm wrong that the GOP are all-in for blanket obstructionism?

POD is too late. Your OP suggests that, if anything, you are underestimating the GOP commitment to all-in blanket obstructionism.
 
POD is too late. Your OP suggests that, if anything, you are underestimating the GOP commitment to all-in blanket obstructionism.

You could be correct. My primary motivation for putting the POD where it is is pretty much this narrative. I fully recognize that for the purposes of presenting a meaningful story arc to the world, these guys could be lying. They could also be telling the truth. While I'm not saying, "change this one meeting and change the past," which is just a little too neat and convenient, I am taking it as likely that after the election the GOP was down and disorganized and looking for a strategy- meaning they didn't actually have one for a minute there.

I cannot imagine that all roads lead to blanket obstructionism from that position.

But yes, it does require an assumption that they were down and disorganized, and I could be wrong for making that assumption.
 
-Obama despite being broadly pro-immigration still deported more folks than several prior presidents combined
I think our fellow citizens who are conservative judge President Obama on what he “really” wants to do.

And more broadly, the whole decline of middle-class jobs is blamed on human agency, not on large macro factors. This is both a human strength and weakness. If there’s a rustling in the grass, we’re more likely to perceive a tiger than just the wind (well, in this case the agency of a sentient creature!)
 
Last edited:
The only POD you really need is different GOP leadership.

Right ater the 1992 election, Bob Dole promised obstructionism and delivered. Trent Lott, for all his faults, helped pass a number of bipartisan initiatives. Welfare reform, the DCMA, CHIP, the ban on drive through deliveries, the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Not all of those were good legislation but they were bipartisan.
 
Ideology has to be considered here. Conservatism is, by nature, resistant to change and the GOP have one limb in that and three limbs in reactionary politics, which is about undoing things for the sake of doing so. Getting the GOP to not be obsctructionists would require some serious changes in who is holding office, which would require more central GOP
 
The only POD you really need is different GOP leadership.

Right ater the 1992 election, Bob Dole promised obstructionism and delivered. Trent Lott, for all his faults, helped pass a number of bipartisan initiatives. Welfare reform, the DCMA, CHIP, the ban on drive through deliveries, the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Not all of those were good legislation but they were bipartisan.

It's also the case that politicians are often thoroughly mercurial. Different prods on the same leadership could potentially achieve different strategies.
 
. . . Conservatism is, by nature, resistant to change and the GOP have one limb in that and three limbs in reactionary politics, which is about undoing things for the sake of doing so. . .
Both agree and disagree. Conservatism in the U.S. since maybe the early '90s has gone very much in a libertarian direction. And I mean in an American "Libertarian Party" direction of wanting smaller government and to cut taxes yet again almost regardless of what's going on in the overall economy. And not, shall we say, in a European libertarian direction!

And American conservatism seems to self-consciously based on philosophy, and on the Euclidian approach of deducing from basis premises. And emphatically not on embracing messy facts (quirky, unexpected, informative facts?) and on embracing a healthy interchange between theory and practice. I mean, look at the books with such titles as "standing firm" and "standing tall."

And there does seem to be a search for enemies and malice on the part of others.
 
Last edited:
Both agree and disagree. Conservatism in the U.S. since maybe the early '90s has gone very much in a libertarian direction. And I mean in an American "Libertarian Party" direction of wanting smaller government and to cut taxes yet again almost regardless of what's going on in the overall economy. And not, shall we say, in a European libertarian direction!

And American conservatism seems to self-consciously based on philosophy, and on the Euclidian approach of deducing from basis premises. And emphatically not on embracing messy facts (quirky, unexpected, informative facts?) and on embracing a healthy interchange between theory and practice. I mean, look at the books with such titles as "standing firm" and "standing tall."

And there does seem to be a search for enemies and malice on the part of others.

Not really, otherwise than the GOP wouldn't be trying to force "traditional family values" down the throats of people, whic is not a libretarian thing to do.
 
Let’s keep in mind that the famous obstructionist congresses were consistently re-elected for one simple reason: the people wanted them. Obama got epically tarred in the 2008 election as a socialist and a radical and a dozen other even more horrid things. When the ACA passed, even if it was a “Republican” health care bill, it still confirmed all that fearmongering to many. From that moment on, you had a substantial minority, not a majority, but a sizable enough number of people who were not going to vote any way that would help Obama. This then, is the challenge of a POD. Not to stop 30 obstructing politicians, but convince 30% of the population otherwise.

How does he avoid that tarring? Is it inevitable?
 
How does he avoid that tarring? Is it inevitable?

The Obama/Hagel thread has some ideas!;)

But I'll make one minor suggestion to Md139115: you don't have to convince 30% of the population otherwise, you have to convince them not to be so vehement about it.
 
-The ACA was originally a Republican plan (RomneyCare in Massachusetts, NixonCare, Heritage coining the individual mandate in response to Clinton's Employer mandate, etc)
-Obama wanted to cut the Corporate tax rate to 28%
-Obama's time as president was when part of the Bush Tax Cuts were made permanent
-Obama partially funded the ACA via cuts to Medicare spending (meanwhile, Romney was campaigning on undoing that - in fact that was the only complaint he actually made about the ACA)
-Obama despite being broadly pro-immigration still deported more folks than several prior presidents combined
-Obama was willing to cooperate with the GOP on a grand bargain for dealing with long-term entitlements issues (c
-Obama kept Republican Bob Gates on as Secretary of Defense
-Obama had Centrist Democrat David Boren and Chuck Hagel as top intelligence advisers
-Obama was reasonably supportive of fracking (with environmental caveats)
-Obama supported cap and trade (which was an early 90s republican idea to deal with Sulfur Dioxide) over more heavy handed regulatory policies

And on trade, Obama got more Republican support than Democratic support.

It's actually kind of funny. Trump in many ways is closer to the caricature conservatives had of Obama than Obama was/is.
Err, no. There's a big difference between a state mandating health coverage and the feds doing this. Also, the Heritage Foundation propsal was much more narrow in scope, as fct checkers frequently noted at the time.

Gates did not stay on at Defense indefinitely, and Chuck Hagel, another Republican at Defense under Obama noted that he was continually undermined and circumvented by the Obama White House. As for a grand bargain, they got ca:winkytongue:s on spending growth, far short of what Simpson-Bowles suggested. Also, Cap and Trade was not a Republican idea.
 
Not really, otherwise than the GOP wouldn't be trying to force "traditional family values" down the throats of people, whic is not a libretarian thing to do.
You got me there! :) The U.S. Republican Party is a mix of evangelicals who favor traditional values (although I do wonder about why the opposition to transgender rights) and what I view as pro-corporate ‘libertarian’ economics.

And, in long-standing democracies with advanced economics, I wonder if this political grouping is the norm, for example, the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, also in Latin America, Asia, Africa? I just don’t know how common.
 
. . . you don't have to convince 30% of the population otherwise, you have to convince them not to be so vehement about it.
Obama avoids his statement from April 2008, “ . . . they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion. . . ” And to make it even worse, he said this at a San Francisco fundraiser about voters in an upcoming Pennsylvania primary.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/13/nation/na-obama13

In its own way, this was as big a mistake as Reagan’s visit to the cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, in 1985. And really, maybe as big a mistake as Nixon’s Watergate. No, it didn’t cost Obama the presidency but it dogged him the whole eight years.

It convinced people already predisposed against him that they were right all along.
 
Last edited:
Top